Galactic traders

jimbly 2022-10-04 03:48

Pretty cool game! I definitely like this kind of thing... first game I survived 7 minutes. Second game I finally won after 32 minutes. It wasn't particularly difficult once I figured out how it all worked, just need to sit and wait and buy slaves on the black market to man my fighters, while occassionally jumping in with my mother ship and jumping back to repair.

I ran into 2 bugs - once (during the tutorial), I clicked the "opportunity" card, and it froze the game (so, I never clicked it again). Also, I chose the bonus that made my ships go half speed, and then when I tried to move a repair ship, it launched, but never landed, presumably it's now moving at a speed of 0? I just treated them as stationary repair stations after that one never returned...

I'd have liked a little more to do invest in colonies and such... it seemed like I could never get more than +1 population per cycle, which means 50 seconds between new fighter fleets, which means, well, a good 30 minutes until I've got enough to beat the enemy. Was there something else I missed there?

Good job, a lot of complexity here for a jam game!

mar3k 2022-10-04 06:57

@jimbly Thanks for the descriptive comment, and I'll add your time to the scoreboard in the description. Thanks also for letting me know of the bugs, I've fixed the scanner bug, but by removing the card, since now thinking about it, it is so overpowered, since the slow down does not mean anything really and seeing all just removes the need for scouts and scouting (also you are more than right about the speed being 0).

I also wanted to make colonies more interesting and with more to do, but there was not enough time, so unfortunately. The amount you generate should be more than 1 if i calculate correctly, but maybe you did not have enough food?

Thanks again.

niccolo-temperanza 2022-10-04 12:25

Can't get it to run :(

jimbly 2022-10-04 13:44

One other note, for Windows users at least, it would be good to include the JRE so they don't need to install a giant SDK to get it to run. Take a look at this game for how it's done (I literally used the JRE included with that game to run this one, so should work!) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/taking-over-the-world

jimbly 2022-10-04 13:46

I definitely had tons of food at the end, maybe it was making more than 1, but if so, I didn't see anything indicating where that would come from, I think I just got +1 population per cycle from the first planet.

mar3k 2022-10-04 14:12

@jimbly Thanks for the top regarding the JRE, I'll try it. Regarding the generation I'll try looking into it. Your mother ship should be generating 0-1 on level 1 and then 1 on other levels and then Planet Dream also generates people. Thanks for letting me know.

mar3k 2022-10-04 14:35

@niccolo-temperanza probably a problem with missing JRE, based on recommendation from Jimbly, I've created a zip with JRE included and a run.bat script. You can try downloading that.

jimbly 2022-10-04 15:08

Ah, I _did_ upgrade my mothership, but I then forgot about it, I bet I never looked at the mothership again after the upgrade (wasn't sure what it did, just figured more damage or something ^_^). So, maybe then I was getting +2 / tick, but that's still a pretty long wait to get to the dozens of fighters needed =).

scottgoldsmith 2022-10-04 16:12

Really enjoyable game, love the depth of this as an RTS on a quick timeline like LD! Would definitely play more of this, just fear lots of people will have difficulty with it not being a simple .exe. Great work!

mar3k 2022-10-04 20:46

@scottgoldsmith thanks for playing and the kind comment. I'm aware of the problems with my Java release and every LD some people find it difficult to run and I get that. Hopefully I'll soon get to upgrade/change this.

thatzniko 2022-10-05 18:08

Cool game!

c4ris 2022-10-05 19:12

I eventually got the game to run thank you for the guidance above. I really enjoyed the game with proper planning I feel like I could go hours exploring a mini galaxy. Impressive how much you could fit in such a short time. With more time you can balance all of the mechanics even more! Thanks for the fun time!

zluca 2022-10-05 19:54

Bild_2022-10-05_214725507.png GOD! FINALLY! it took me over an hour and multiple attempts but i finally beat it :muscle: great game, lots of strategy. I feel like the enemy units sometimes are way stronger attack wise than my own, or i just saw myself defeated too often :sweat_smile: I like how i always felt like i could beat it eventually, really enjoyed it, great game. I'd love to give you some critique as well, but except for missing music, a desire for more levels and missing credits, i cant think of anything:

snarerush 2022-10-05 20:02

Fun little game! Nicely boils down a lot of rts elements.

deltamain 2022-10-05 20:11

Wow! You definetely should continue this game. I don't know how you managed to make this amount of content in just 2 days. The only problem I had was crash, that happened then I clicked the opportunity card.

caerind 2022-10-05 21:03

Really nice game ! A bit long to play, I couldn't manage to win, the enemy was growing to fast for me. My citizen growing rate wasn't enough, I'm not sure if I could boost it up.

mar3k 2022-10-05 21:44

@c4ris Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm really happy you liked it.

@zluca Damn, that is impressive time, I'm adding you to the scoreboard! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I agree with you, some music would totally be nice and more levels or at least some more procedural generation would add a lot. Thanks again.

@deltamain Thank you so much, I appreciate such a nice comment. Maybe I could do some more work on it, after all I did enjoy making this game a lot. And sorry for the crash, I'll try look into it.

@caerind Thank you. I wanted to make the match shorter, but that's really not the case it seems like. You can boost the people generation by leveling up your mother ship (there are hidden "achievements", which give you level up opportunity card) and also some planets generate people, when colonized. Then there is also the black market which sells slaves and also you always need food otherwise people start dying.

thedude3600 2022-10-05 22:05

This is pretty cool! It works really well! For me, an RTS would be way too ambitious for a Game Jam, but this was fun to play! Didnt beat it (yet!) but enjoyed it. One nit pick I had (and maybe I was playing wrong) but once a ship starts moving and you deselect it, I couldnt figure out how to reselect it to change its course :-/. but over all Great Job!

mar3k 2022-10-06 21:07

@thedude3600 Thank you so much for your comment and playing the game. Regarding the ship selection, it is intentional. If I had time to add some story and meaning to the game, this would totally be one of the things. Once you send a ship somewhere it cannot be targeted, cannot target anything and cannot change course - kinda like how the transportation works in this universe.

alexander-epton 2022-10-08 01:00

i wasn't able to play this as half the ui was hidden offscreen. will try tomorrow on a larger screen. was dissapointed as the gameplay looks really deep and fun to play

mar3k 2022-10-08 08:39

@alexander-epton Oh sorry for that. The game has set resolution and I didn't have time to add settings to change them. A full HD screen is unfortunately needed.

jirrev 2022-10-08 15:16

After reading the comments I indeed lowered by settings to full HD (was ultra-wide). I played two games, the first I died after around 10 mins, the second after around 15, definitely a complex game with a simple theme. Lovely creation!

itooh 2022-10-09 15:24

Mmm, maybe I don't know how to correctly play this game. ^^' I must have spent about 40 minutes on a single game, and I was just stuck from the beginning. Despite having colonized 3 planets, I never gained people fast enough. It was taking me probably one minute or two to build a single fleet. Trading allowed me to quickly gain other resources, but in the end the occasion to get people (and thus augment my fleet) were rare. The number of the top right reached -145, some of my colonies had a negative happiness (although I figured out how to increase it eventually, but I don't know how it affects their productivity). I'm proud of having colonized the third planet, surrounded by enemies. But I eventually understood that no matter what amount of time I would spend accumulating resources, all those efforts are always reduced to nothing when I get attack by the adversary, which army grow at a rate extremely higher than mine. There's no way I wait until I have 27 fleets! Maybe there's a mechanic I didn't understood. Or maybe I did a wrong choice at the beginning that lead to this unfortunate situation. But it feels like the one resource that the game asks for the most was also the more scarce, except for the enemy which had it very quickly.

Still an engaging system! I enjoyed the time I had figuring it out (the tutorial is really great, but there's a lot of things to learn). And it could lead to a great strategy game with a little bit more balancing! I think what was missing was a feeling of progression: usually the more time I spend gathering resources, the more faster it becomes to obtain more of them, and to advance in other goals. Here I felt stagnating even though I had tons of (almost) everything. Clean job also on the sprites, they're easily identifiable and consistent with each other. Congratulation for managing to finish a RTS during a jam, it's never easy!

mar3k 2022-10-10 07:10

@itooh Thank you so much for the detailed comment, it really helps me better understand what needs more polishing. And I get that the AI difficulty is one of the things. I didn't have much time to test it properly and it shows, although there are some tricks player can use to "cheat" the system (such as disengaging, repairing and returning). Also I wanted people to be slow-growing resource so that it was not too easy and building fleet would take some more time and managing, but it might be too slow I suppose. Thanks for playing and for your comment.

fedora 2022-10-13 02:20

Hey, really cool game, reminds me of The Day of Sagittarius III. It's great that you have a tutorial like that to get the playing started since the game is pretty complex.

cybek 2022-10-14 23:16

Hey, I managed to get java exception :P Exception in thread "ld50" java.util.ConcurrentModificationException at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.checkForComodification(Unknown Source) at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.next(Unknown Source) at com.sedlacek.ld51.gui.OpportunityBar.update(OpportunityBar.java:47) at com.sedlacek.ld51.gui.GUIHandler.update(GUIHandler.java:16) at com.sedlacek.ld51.main.Game.update(Game.java:128) at com.sedlacek.ld51.main.Game.run(Game.java:328) at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Ok, after that, it's funny game, I like that concept. The graphics and sounds are coherent and beautiful! The resources icons are really understandable, I managed to know what is what when I missed the labels :)

mar3k 2022-10-14 23:18

@cybek Thanks for the bug report, I'll look into it. I'm glad you liked the game. Thanks for playing.

alchemic 2022-10-15 00:24

This was a pretty nice experience, especially the tutorial.

The gameplay was a bit slow-paced for my tastes, but it seemed very well thought-out.

The cards at the bottom of the screen kind of faded out of my eyesight, so I frequently forgot about them.

At one point I had moved forward and colonized a planet (or so i thought?) and a bit later it suddenly spawned enemy ships surrounding it, killing me instantly. Not sure what I was missing there lol, maybe a bug?

Overall pretty ambitious, the trading system works pretty well.

vykri 2022-10-15 21:23

Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.

https://youtu.be/S5tejk33ank

zimny11 2022-10-16 17:36

Making RTS for Compo is really impressive! My only feedback would be: there was no way for me to resized the window and part of it was cut off and some music would be nice. Anyway, great job!